


Gold

by YoGrossDude



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Affectionate Metallurgy References, F/M, Ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-07 17:09:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16857967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YoGrossDude/pseuds/YoGrossDude
Summary: They are still three days’ march from Meridian when he asks Ersa, the two of them alone in his tent and reviewing the last of their stratagems, what sort of metal he would be.





	Gold

**Author's Note:**

> reposted from my tumblr, now with new, lore-friendlier edits!!

The Oseram see metal everywhere, even in people: a man might be nickel, shining true even under the hottest fire, or stalwart, stubborn lead. It was yet another part of them that Avad found fascinating, yet another part of them that made him remember the fear etched on every face he had ever witnessed in the Sun-Ring when sleep refused to come. How many of them had been copper or silver or steel, he wonders, and he thinks of the roar of machines and the screams that followed, the thunder of the crowd and the Shadow in his father’s empty, pitiless eyes.

They are still three days’ march from Meridian when he asks Ersa, the two of them alone in his tent and reviewing the last of their stratagems, what sort of metal he would be.

“Gold,” she says without even pausing, as though the answer had always been waiting for him to ask, sitting patiently on her tongue. She’s still studying the map in front of her, fingers tapping the places where the Freebooters will use their fearsome cannons on the city’s walls, where Avad will give the order to have his own men kill their brothers.

“Ah.” He thinks on it for a moment, then realizes she must be teasing him.

“Soft?” he asks lightly, “Easily pierced?”

Ersa snorts. “You don’t make armor out of gold, Carja,” she says scornfully, “That’s not what it’s good for.”

It’s been dark for hours, even the usual late-night cacophony of the Freebooters long since ended. They should both be resting, not hunched over a map they’ve already looked at a thousand times over, and Ersa has already spent too much time in his tent since they’ve set out from the Claim – too much time, and never enough. People will begin to suspect soon, if they don’t already.

“Bronze and copper can carry a spark damn well, but they get weak fast.” Ersa’s voice is unusually quiet. “Eaten away by the shock. Not gold, though. You use gold when you need something to make sure what you’re forging carries current for a long time.”

She sucks in a quick breath, as if to steady her nerves. “If all this – ” she continues, gesturing at the map in front of them, “– is going to mean anything, then I want whoever carries that spark to last, too.”

Avad studies her from across the table, the proud muscles of her arms, the uneven tangles of her hair, the raw strength that spreads from her to fill a room like the light of the Sun. His hand reaches out, a new habit already wonderfully familiar, a new habit he will one day force himself to forget, to cover one of her own, and her skin there is thick with calluses and a hundred tiny scars.

And then Ersa finally lifts her gaze from the table to look up at him. “Doesn’t hurt that gold’s pretty, either,” she says, her grin rough and wide, and when he kisses her – each and every one of them bright and burning as the first – he finds that he does not mind being gold at all.


End file.
